Colleges work on gender inclusivity with pins, pronouns

Champlain College Associate Director Maggie Melvin of the Women and Gender Center and Residential Life and Residential Life Director Danielle Barube show off examples of hundreds of pins distributed to students, on Monday, August 29, 2016.(Photo: MONICA DONOVAN/for the FREE PRES)

Before the class of 2020 invaded Champlain College's campus this year, staff members put their heads together to figure out new ways to accommodate students in the LGBT community.

One idea: Create buttons displaying the pronouns with which the students identify, said Danelle Berube, the college's director of residential life. As first-year orientation began, and upper-class student leaders also returned to campus, hundreds of pins were handed out. Faculty and staff also grabbed pins that fit their preferences.

A sampling of the hundreds of gender pronoun pins distributed to Champlain College students, on Monday, August 29, 2016.(Photo: MONICA DONOVAN/for the FREE PRES)

Berube said Monday the school already needs to make more.

"We have a number of students who identify as transgender or on the non-binary spectrum, and about a week before orientation while we were pulling together materials, the idea just kind of came out of the air," Berube said. "It just seemed like a no-brainer — a very easy way to make the first day of college for a number of our students maybe a little bit easier."

"We have seen a lot of students who have really taken hold of pronoun use as being something they recognize as being an important way of showing respect and acceptance and support to their peers and to themselves," said Maggie Melvin, associate director of the campus' new Women and Gender Center, which opened Monday.

The buttons are one piece of an effort by the college to become more inclusive, Melvin said. The Women and Gender Center was the culmination of student requests for a place for education and programming on those types of issues on campus. Current programming that has developed on campus around LGBT issues now will have a designated place to foster collaboration and further education, Melvin said.

Associate Director Maggie Melvin of the Women and Gender Center at Champlain College shows off one of hundreds of pins distributed to students, on Monday, August 29, 2016.(Photo: MONICA DONOVAN/for the FREE PRES)

As part of an effort for greater inclusion, administrators have attempted to ensure preferred identities or names are used throughout campus and to house individuals according to their preference. Students who are unfamiliar with the concept of gender identity generally have been open to learning more, Berube and Melvin agreed.

"It would certainly be a generalization to say everyone is on board," Berube said. "Certainly there's resistance or folks who maybe it just doesn't jive with their beliefs or their own thinking, but we're in an educational atmosphere, so this is the place where people are supposed to confront their values and beliefs and understand them or push on them. This is the place where we should be doing this."

Sarah McNally, a student advocate for LGBT community members, said the environment toward LGBT individuals has become better since she has been at Champlain College. McNally cited pronoun and name-change awareness, gender-neutral housing and the new Women and Gender Center as some of the major improvements she has seen in her three years at Champlain. McNally is a member of the class of 2017.

McNally said she is pleased with the button idea, especially for first-year students going through orientation.

"When I first got here, there wasn't much in terms of a widespread, 'Let's ask people's pronouns' effort," McNally said. "That was mostly the LGBT folks."

She added, "I think the pins are good. ... When you create a culture that says, 'Hey, we ask people's pronouns, we don't assume them,' that really lets students know that that's the culture of the school, and they can either accept it or not."

McNally said she hopes Champlain continues toward total inclusiveness, and she is interested to see what will be the mission of the new Women and Gender Center. She said she hopes the center will help LGBT students be "at the table" in every discussion at Champlain.

On other campuses

The University of Vermont also has confronted issues of gender identity as students and teachers have worn name tags and made business cards with their preferred pronouns. They also add preferred pronouns to the taglines of emails, said Dot Brauer, director of UVM's LGBT Center, who prefers to be described by the pronouns they, their and them. Introductions between students also have begun to involve names and pronouns, but Brauer said this practice is "far from universal."

Gender identity and other LGBT issues mainly have been accepted by students and faculty at UVM, creating a comfortable atmosphere for members of the LGBT community, Brauer said. They said many students do not need to work actively at being accepted or understood by the UVM community.

"They're not going to be confronted by a lot of negativity," Brauer said. "People are not going to be actively subjecting them to lots of open bias or anything like that. ... Many students just get very relaxed about their LGBT identity and go off and start doing other things."

Brauer said there is still work to be done in understanding how gender can be fluid. However, in their 15 years at UVM, Brauer said they have generally felt supported by their colleagues, and they have seen a willingness to work on complex LGBT issues.

Registrar Office software at UVM has allowed students to specify preferred names or pronouns when being addressed on campus. Champlain College and St. Michael's College officials said software their institutions have used is less flexible, and that changes in identity often must be entered manually or passed onto campus community members individually.

David Barrowclough, of the St. Michael's College Registrar's Office, said the college has tried to work with students to assess individual needs when addressing name changes, name choices and pronoun choices.

He said many students specify those preferences when coming in as first-years. Barrowclough said he hopes at some point the registrar technology can provide the college the tools needed to accurately report names to the federal government while doing what is best for students.

"It feels a little boxed in with what we have right now," Barrowclough said.